With most Montrealers receiving their tax bills in the mail this week, the city’s mayor said citizens should expect better services than they’ve seen so far this winter.

“We want to improve. We want to make sure citizens are satisfied with the services they are paying for,” Valérie Plante said. “We’re really good at removing snow, but one of the things we need to improve is everything related to ice.”

Plante said she’s concerned about uneven service in the boroughs when it comes to de-icing sidewalks and spreading abrasives. In a news conference on Wednesday, the city revealed that some boroughs spread salt and stones on their sidewalks six times during the last week when some others only spread it twice.

Plante did not say which boroughs were not faring as well, but she unveiled a new, small sidewalk-sized truck with a metal rotor that has spikes on it she dubbed the “ice crusher.” The vehicle has been getting a trial run in the Ville-Marie borough for the last two years, and Plante said any borough that wants to purchase one can get one — by next fall.

As for immediate plans to improve snow clearing and de-icing in the city, Plante was short on details. She said she would meet with the mayors of the other boroughs to get a better idea about best practices. She will also meet professionals in the field like the Association des entrepreneurs de déneigement du Québec, which sent a letter to the city in November asking for a meeting. Although the association said it has not received an answer to its request, Plante told reporters she intends to meet the group in the near future.

Meanwhile, the city was still taking flak Wednesday for its decision to delay clearing snow from the last downfall, which resulted in crusty ice on sidewalks, roads and parking lots. The ice has lingered on many surfaces despite a snow-removal operation that got underway on Sunday.

Jonathan Trudeau, the president of the Association des entrepreneurs de déneigement du Québec, said the city erred when it failed to clear the snow last week. The city had expected the snow to melt during a one-day thaw.

“If that decision were taken at the end of February or the beginning of March or even in October, it would have been a good one,” Trudeau said. “Except in January, the temperature fluctuations are dramatic, and in this case, everything froze and turned into (concrete).”

Trudeau recognized it’s difficult for the city to make informed decisions on snow clearing, and that’s why he’s offering his association’s expertise.

“We have been doing this in some cases for three generations, so we have the experience,” he said.

Luis Miranda, the borough mayor of Anjou, said if the city had just removed the snow at the beginning of last week as his borough did, there wouldn’t be any ice now.

“I took away the snow before it turned into ice; that’s what you had to do,” Miranda said. “The city decided to let it melt; it melted a bit and it stayed on the street, but water turns into ice, and they’re stuck with it.”

Miranda said he warned Jean-François Parenteau, the executive committee member in charge of snow clearing, that the city should be clearing snow rather than waiting for it to melt.

Miranda took heat for acting before the central city declared a city-wide snow-clearing operation. He said he has no regrets, but it’s possible the city will penalize him by reducing his overall operating budget.

On Wednesday, Parenteau defended the decision to delay snow clearing, saying it was not made to save money but rather to alleviate the city’s overflowing snow dumps. Two of the city’s dumps, one in Sud-Ouest and one in Lachine, have reached capacity, and one used by both LaSalle and Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce near the Angrignon shopping mall is at 90 per cent capacity and won’t be able to handle the volume from another major storm, Parenteau said.

As such, the city is asking the Quebec Environment minister to approve the temporary use of a site near the abandoned Blue Bonnets/Hippodrome site in Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.

Parenteau said the city has received about the same amount of snow already this year as it usually receives in a normal winter.

However, Miranda, who once served as the city’s snow czar in 2009 under the administration of former mayor Gérald Tremblay, said that’s simply not true. He said he doesn’t understand how some of the city’s dumps are full when his still has plenty of capacity.

“In 2007, we received 400 centimetres of snow,” Miranda said. “A normal winter is 200, and we’re not even there yet. How can they be full? I really don’t know.”

His borough shares its dump with neighbouring boroughs of Montréal-Nord, St-Léonard and Rivière-des-Prairies.

According to Environment Canada, the city received 147 centimetres of snow so far this season, compared with 230 centimetres for all of last season.

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